JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With five games remaining in the 2017 regular season, the Jaguars still control their playoff destiny.
Despite Sunday's 27-24 loss in Arizona, Jacksonville is tied with the Tennessee Titans atop the AFC South. If the season ended today, the Jaguars would be the fifth seed in the AFC playoffs and would travel to Kansas City to face the Chiefs in the first round.
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The Titans hold the tie-breaker advantage based on head-to-head play, but the two teams will face one another on New Year's Eve in the season's final weekend.
Comparing the Jaguars schedule to the Titans, there are plenty of similarities. Both teams face three teams with losing records in the coming weeks. The Jaguars host the 3-8 Colts on Sunday and the 4-6 Texans two weeks later. Both teams play at 1-10 San Francisco. The other losing team the Titans face is Arizona, who just beat the Jaguars.
Both teams play three games at home. Tennessee's opponents' winning percentage is slightly better, .463 compared to .407 for the Jaguars opponents.
It seems likely that the division will come down to the final game of the season, in Nashville. If the Jaguars win out, that would leave them with a 12-4 record and the best the Titans could hope for would be 11-5, with no tie-breaker needed. If the Jaguars and Titans finish with the same record and the Jaguars beat the Titans, the next tie-breaker would be division record. The Jaguars have won two of three division games so far. The Titans are 3-1 in the AFC South. Assuming the Jaguars beat the Colts and Texans, then beat the Titans, they would have a 5-1 division record and Tennessee would finish with two losses in the division. In that scenario, the Jaguars would win the division title.
However, a loss to the Colts or Texans would complicate things for the Jaguars. The next tie-breaker is record in common games. After Week 11, the Jaguars hold a one-game advantage in the common games tie-breaker as a result of their win over the Steelers and the Titans' loss to Pittsburgh. The Titans have beaten the Seahawks, whom the Jaguars have yet to face, and the Jaguars lost to the Rams and Cardinals, who both remain on Tennessee's schedule.
What's the upshot of all of this? If the Jaguars win out, they are in the postseason and will host a playoff game for the first time since the 1999 season. If they don't win out, they need to beat the Titans and hope that Tennessee loses to the Cardinals, 49ers or Rams. Otherwise, Jacksonville will be in a battle for one of the wild-card spots with a whole new cadre of teams to worry about.